They were right, you should never run a GUI as root. The wrong part was not providing the alternative before blocking it. That maintainer left KDE IIRC, not sur

They were right, you should never run a GUI as root. The wrong part was not providing the alternative before blocking it. That maintainer left KDE IIRC, not sure why but I heard there were a lot of conflicts. Last time I checked this feature was in progress by KDE devs, polkit or something like that, that allowed you to do that kind of operation without root. But it was in a limbo because it was huge and hard to merge. They were trying again last time I checked. They would probably help you or anyone who would like that feature implemented to get started.